SPLEEN is the personal blog of Stephen Judd

All posts tagged "whitcoulls"

For the last year or two I've been buying more books than I used to. I'm not sure why — perhaps a little collecting instinct is manifesting. About half my recent purchases have come from Amazon, since the exchange rate has been so favourable, and many of the rest from Borders, or Unity, or Dymocks. Not so many from Whitcoulls though. I just don't seem to find much there that tickles me. There may be a reason for that.

Whitcoulls is part of a giant conglomerate these days, Pacific Equity Partners, and it seems that they really just don't give a rats about books, only about their profit margins. Obviously all businesses exist to make profits, but specialised retailers have to care about the thing they specialise in. Whitcoulls is now at the point of bullying small publishers to pay for the privilege of being stocked. Read the astounding correspondence (via Boing Boing).

In Wellington and Auckland we'll have Borders, and Unity and Dymocks; Christchurch still has the excellent Scorpios. If I lived in a small town though, I think I'd be resigned to getting all my books online from Amazon or Fishpond. It doesn't seem as though there'll be much of the serendipitous pleasure I expect from a real bookshop in strolling through Whitcoulls any more.